


Hello, Cas

by cortexikid



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean Winchester Deserves to be Happy, Dean makes some confessions of his own, Dean takes another drive to deliver some truths to a certain angel, Finally, First Kiss, Fix-It, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Canon, So does Cas, fellas is it gay to keep your bff's trench coat in your trunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:53:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27649141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cortexikid/pseuds/cortexikid
Summary: “God, I missed you.”Something unreadable passes over Cas’ face before a smile, small but warm, appears.“I missed you too, Dean.”He lets that settle between them for a beat, basking in the words that always manage to sound a little different coming from his best friend than they ever did from his brother.“Back in the bunker…” he attempts, only to trail off when he sees Cas visibly tense, eyes darting away again.He’s waiting for rejection,Dean thinks to himself.The realization hits him like a spike through the back.Too soon?
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 47
Kudos: 314





	Hello, Cas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [majel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/majel/gifts), [TheFriendlyPigeon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFriendlyPigeon/gifts).



> Hi! So, I haven’t properly watched Supernatural since...season 9 or 10? I can’t even remember. But you bet your ass I’ve been clowning the last two weeks (bingeing Youtube videos and recaps) and watched the finale live despite it being 2am where I live. And now, 15 years after teen-me first sat down to watch the pilot (I’m old lol), I finally allowed myself to write Destiel to try to heal from my bad decisions. This is dedicated to [ itsmajel ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/majel/pseuds/majel) and [ TheFriendlyPigeon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFriendlyPigeon) who have helped me in that healing process with jokes and memes and rants.
> 
> Also, I don’t care how many times Supernatural tries to convince us otherwise, I will never write ‘Cass.’ Sorry not sorry. Enjoy!

“Hello, Cas.”

Dean Winchester has to admit this new Heaven is great and all, but nothing compares to the deep-seated satisfaction of watching his best friend startle at his voice, turning on the spot, their eyes locking. 

_Now you know how it feels, dumbass._

“Hello, Dean.” 

Something settles in Dean’s chest at that.

Cas looks different. Younger, maybe. Less tortured, definitely.

The trench coat isn’t quite right, though.

The sun is still shining, where they stand on the edge of the lake. 

Dean has no idea how much time has passed since he left Sam with their mom and dad and hit the road again, one destination in mind, Bobby’s “Cas helped” ringing in his ears. He doesn’t know how he knew where to go, it more of a feeling, than anything else. Like a beacon calling out to somewhere deep inside him. 

So he drives. 

And finds him at the edge of a familiar-looking pier, gazing out at the water, deep in thought. 

So deep in fact, that Dean manages to somehow sneak up on him. He wonders if it’s a particular perk that Jack wrote into the fabric of this place.

_Dean Winchester must finally be allowed to get the drop on the angel, Castiel. It’s an intrinsic part of his eternal paradise._

For what must be one of the only times in their many years of friendship, Cas breaks eye contact after a fleeting but heavy glance, looking over Dean’s shoulder to where Baby is glinting in the late-afternoon sun. 

“Did you have a nice drive?” 

He did.

He hadn’t meant for it to last quite as long as it did, but got lost in the journey, time slipping by like nothing at all as Kansas and later, Led Zeppelin, crooned on the radio.

“I did,” he replies, coming to stand right next to the angel, “thanks for bringing Baby up here.” 

He knows it was Cas’ doing. Ensuring his Impala was waiting for him. Not that Jack needed reminding. He smiles as he thinks of their driving lessons. 

“Your version of Heaven wouldn’t be complete without your beloved vehicle,” Cas attempts a smile while still not looking directly at him. 

Something lurches in Dean’s stomach. The same something that once had him reaching for the bottle and drinking himself into a blackout, numbing stupor. 

“Cas…” he tries to speak over the lump in his throat, “back in the bunker, man, I—”

“Sam arrived okay?” Cas cuts across lightly, moving away from him, shuffling along the edge of the lake, eyes downcast.

Dean blinks before stumbling after him, confused.

“Uh, yeah. He did. Lived a long, happy life with Eileen. Just like he deserved.” 

Cas says nothing at that, but the tension that mars his shoulders eases a little. 

“Eileen arrived some time ago. I got to introduce her to your mom.”

Dean didn’t know that. Hadn’t thought to ask that. Hadn’t thought to ask a lot of things, really.

Guilt rises from the pit of his gut. 

“Sammy’s with them all now,” he speaks in an effort to drown it out, “pretty sure Mom is showing her our baby pictures as we speak.” 

He chuckles.

“Jack really did think of every little detail, huh?” 

Cas gives a nod, short and curt, eyes still downcast and suddenly, Dean can’t take it anymore. 

“I thought about it, every day. Saving you.”

The words expel from him, banished from his body before he can stop them. 

His legs move on their own volition until he is barely a foot from him, speaking directly to the back of his head. 

“‘ _Gripping you tight and raising you from perdition_ ,’” he quotes in his best Cas-gruff, “repaying the favor from all those years ago.”

He heaves a sigh as Cas abruptly comes to a halt.

“Killing myself somehow to plunge into the Empty on a wing and a prayer, maybe. One last deal to end all deals. But then I...I thought about your sacrifice. You _died_ for me, Cas. So that I could live. So that I could be more than daddy’s blunt instrument. More than the destructive son of a bitch I’ve been since that night in ‘83.”

He pauses, watching the water ripple along the bank. 

“I had no way of knowing that some wayward rebar would put a stop to that so soon,” he laughs dryly, holding his arms out, sarcasm seeping into his tone, “‘the great Dean Winchester’ cut down in his prime by some shoddy—”

“I almost asked Jack to bring you back,” Cas interjects, eyes now cast out to the skyline as he wrings his hands, “I was...concerned about Sam. And—the unfairness of it all. I...I didn’t want your story to end like that, Dean. You deserve happiness too.”

His heart gives another lurch in his chest.

_So much for being dead. Don’t think the ol’ ticker got the memo._

“I was, Cas,” he half whispers to the water, “I _was_ happy. If even just for a little bit. Because, we, me and Sam, we were finally writing our own story. Not Chuck.” 

He tilts his head as Cas slowly begins to turn. 

“I just didn’t count on that kinda plot twist,” he speaks around a half-smirk, half-grimace, “always thought I’d go down in a blaze of glory. Not offed by some opportunistic, no-name vamp and crappy reinforced steel.” 

He finally lets himself laugh at that. Loud and abrupt and more than a little pained. The sheer absurdity of it. Him, having survived Hell and possessions and God himself. 

Cas doesn’t laugh.

But he does step slightly closer. 

“He called his kid Dean,” Dean continues, apropos of nothing. “Sammy.”

“I heard.”

“Dean _Castiel_ Winchester.” 

Cas blinks, apparently not privy to that information.

“That’s...touching.” 

“Yeah,” Dean grins, “really rolls off the tongue, huh? _Castiel Winchester_?” 

Cas shifts his weight from foot to foot, his brow furrowed.

Guilt creeps into Dean’s veins. 

“Cas...will you look at me, man?” 

A beat passes. 

“Please?” 

Finally, those bright blue eyes meet his, holding his gaze this time. 

“Hi.” 

It’s not what he intended to say. Not even close. But it’s a start.

Cas throws him a puzzled look.

“Hello, Dean.” 

A shiver, one he hasn’t felt in what feels like a lifetime ago and also like it was yesterday, flows up his spine at Cas’ voice. 

“ _God_ , I missed you.” 

Something unreadable passes over Cas’ face before a smile, small but warm, appears. 

“I missed you too, Dean.” 

He lets that settle between them for a beat, basking in the words that always manage to sound a little different coming from his best friend than they ever did from his brother. 

“Back in the bunker…” he attempts again, only to trail off when he sees Cas visibly tense, eyes darting away again.

 _He’s waiting for rejection,_ he thinks to himself.

The realisation hits him like a spike through the back.

_Too soon?_

“Back in the bunker,” he continues for the third time, voice softer than he could ever remember it being, “I thought that was it. That we were gonna die. For good.” 

Cas’ gaze slowly starts to rise again.

“That Billie was gonna kill you, that the last thing I’d see before I died was her destroying you,” he pauses, his breath shaky, “and it broke me. That...fear...I started to shut down.” 

Blue eyes meet green. 

“And then you started talking,” he murmurs, his pulse speeding up as he recounts the memory he had fought so hard to keep buried, “you said that happiness isn’t in the having. It’s in just being. In just...saying it.’” 

A gasp, short and shallow and quiet escapes Cas, then.

But he keeps Dean’s gaze. 

“Yes I...I did say that.” 

Dean nods.

“You said something else too.” 

Cas nods back, a stricken expression crossing his face. 

“Dean—”

“I was frozen, paralysed,” Dean cuts across him, taking that last step towards him to halt merely inches from his face, “I...I couldn’t process what you were saying. I couldn’t...make sense of it. You said I was caring and selfless and the most loving human being you had ever known, but Cas,” he takes a deep, shuddering breath, the words lodging in his throat as he blinks back the burning behind his eyes. 

“You deserved so much better than what I gave you.” 

Cas shakes his head vigorously, holding up a hand. 

“No, Dean. What you gave me—”

“All I gave you was grief and anger and pain, man. I know that.” 

Cas’ mouth twists at that. 

“You always came when I called, you fell, rebelled, were hunted,” Dean continues, swallowing down the bile rising in his throat, “you gave me everything. You gave your grace, your life, more than once—”

“And I did all that, I risked my life, my grace, I rebelled and was hunted because I had changed, Dean. I cared. _You_ changed me. _You_ made me care about everything and everyone. _You_ gave me that. _You_ gave me a place in the world. A place to call home. A family to call my own. That was all _you._ ” 

Cas is breathing hard. Dean’s eyes lowers to his chest, surprised to find it heaving. Something stirs in his stomach at the sight. 

“Do you understand?” 

Slowly, he lifts his gaze back up and nods. 

They fall into a silence, nothing but the sound of the water and some nearby birds passing between them. 

It’s here that Dean finally decides that his happiness deserves to be said. No Empty could threaten them here. But he’s always been an ‘actions speak louder’ kinda guy. 

Turning on his heel, he books it back over to Baby, throwing open the trunk. He can feel Cas’ wide, confused eyes on him and he reaches in and pulls out what he instinctively knows is somehow there, waiting for him. Slamming the trunk, he holds it behind his back as he races back over to the lake’s edge, a little unnerved that Cas may do one of his disappearing acts before he gets a chance to show him. 

He takes the last few steps slowly. Closing the distance between them bit by bit as he tries to dredge up every ounce of courage he has ever felt fighting demons and vampires and the Devil and God. 

He stops mere inches from Castiel, angel of the (former) Lord, and the best friend he has ever had and holds out his old trench coat, the same coat he had kept with him all this time, on every hunt, on every drive. 

“This uh...this belongs to you.” 

It’s not the only thing that belongs to him. But Dean can’t quite say that. Not just yet. 

“Dean…” Cas’ voice is low, soft when he reaches out to take it, their fingers brushing. 

A bolt of electricity flows up Dean’s arm, his grip tightening on the cloth.

“You kept it.” 

Cas sounds disbelieving, reverent, loving. 

He sounds like he has always sounded, now that Dean lets himself hear it.

See it.

“Of course I kept it. It’s yours. And I…” he lets out a breath, nerves settling as he allows himself to finally experience those feelings within him differently for the first time, like he once said he wanted to, to a priest in a church confessional. 

He speaks the truth, out loud, for his best friend, the man who has meant everything to him for what feels like forever, to finally hear.

“I love you too, Cas.” 

He half expects the new Heaven to open, a crack in the chassis of paradise to form at that revelation. 

But the water keeps flowing, the birds keep singing and Cas...keeps staring.

Not exactly the reaction he was going for.

“It’s...I’m honoured to be considered a Winchester brother.”

Dean blinks.

Ice cold fear, stronger and more intense than anything he had ever felt while he was alive, seeps into his veins, then. 

Had he got it wrong? What Cas was saying to him in his last moments? Had that not meant—

He looks down into those deep blue eyes and sees...more. More emotions and thoughts and feelings than Dean could hope to comprehend. 

Cas always did look at him a hell of a lot differently than Sam ever did. Than _anyone ever did._

With a shake of his head and a mental pep-talk that consists fully of _‘fuck it, I’m already dead,’_ he lets his hand slide across Cas’, halting it before he could pull away.

“No, Cas I-I mean yeah, you _are_ a Winchester, always have been, but...that’s not what I meant. I...”

He puts the slightest amount of pressure on the back of his hand, almost squeezing but not quite, it enough to spur him on to make another confession. His deepest and oldest yet.

“What you wanted but...could never have? I-I’m saying _you can have it_.” 

He’s pretty sure neither one of them are breathing at that moment. Not that Cas ever needed to, or that they especially need to now. But, there is a noticeable stillness between them as Cas digests his words. 

It’s the longest seven seconds of Dean’s after-life. And considering time moves differently up here, that’s saying something. 

A smile, gentle but filled with so much happiness it has Dean’s heart hammering against his ribcage, breaks out on Cas’ face. 

“I would like that, Dean.” 

Bafflingly, he begins to shed his clothes.

Dean’s eyes widen, panic and _something else_ surging through him as he glances frantically around for any prying eyes. Cas is stripping out in the open, in heaven of all places. 

_Holy shit. The holiest._

“Whoa, whoa, what—”

It’s then that he realises that Cas is just removing his coat and is now pulling on the old one, beaming. 

That settles something in Dean. Fills a space he knew had been empty for a long, long time, as his eyes land on Cas with his signature trench coat, striped tie and white shirt, even in paradise. 

He hadn’t changed too much, then. And _God, (Jack?)_ , Dean loves him for it. 

“How do I look?” Cas asks, holding his arms out, looking expectant, much like he had years ago when he had walked out of their motel bathroom, freshly changed and Dean didn’t know quite how to keep his shit together.

He had been so blind.

“Good,” he rasps before clearing his throat, reaching out and fixing Cas’ lapels, smoothing them down and itching to keep his hands resting just over his heart.

Another beat passes as Dean stares doggedly down at the old, brown material. 

"You know,” Cas begins, sounding as if he had just figured something out, “in those ‘chick flicks’ you insist you don't like, wouldn't this be the part where you kiss me?"

Green eyes meet those baby blue for what felt like the millionth and first time all at once. 

“You wanna have a chick flick moment, Cas?” he asks quietly, because he’s scared and needs a minute to actually get his shit together for the most important thing he never got to do in life. 

“After everything, I think we deserve it.”

Dean’s eyes slip closed at that, basking in the timbre of his voice as he leans down to rest their foreheads together. 

“Yeah,” he agrees, his breath brushing against Cas’ lips, “we do.”

He closes the gap and kisses him feather-light. 

Heaven doesn’t implode, the world doesn’t end.

So he does it again.

A little harder this time, his mouth dropping open in a half-gasp as Cas leans up, pressing against him and clutching at his shirt, his tongue trailing along his bottom lip. 

_Damn. The pizza man teach him that too?_

Any coherent thought leaves his brain when he licks into Cas’ mouth, their tongues meeting. Dean clasps Cas’ jaw in his hand Cas grips his shoulder, right over where his risened handprint used to lie, and his bloodied one stayed on his jacket forever as Dean never could bring himself to wash it before he kicked the bucket. 

Emotion wells in Dean’s chest, the word _finally_ ringing within him. 

“I-I have wanted that for a very long time,” Cas mumbles against his lips as they break for air from habit rather than necessity. 

“Yeah, me too…” Dean replies, tipping their foreheads together again, “I’m sorry it took me so long to realise it.” 

Cas’ hold on his shoulder tightens. It’s forgiveness and an apology all in one. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I’m sorry I had to leave you.” 

_I’m sorry you died_ , lies unsaid between them. 

Dean merely shakes his head, tilting back to catch his eye. 

“So we’re two sorry dumbasses,” he jokes gently, warmth spreading in his chest at the sight of Cas’ bright eyes glistening, knowing his own are in a similar state.

“I prefer the word ‘pining.’ Less dumb, less ass.” 

A laugh bursts from Dean then, loud and more jovial than he had felt in years. 

“Come on, sunshine,” he grins, knocking their shoulders and staying close, “we got some people waiting to see us.” 

**Author's Note:**

> And that’s all she wrote, folks. How’d I do? Sorry if there are any inaccuracies, I've been out of the Spn life for years.
> 
> [ I also write Reddie stuff ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cortexikid/works?fandom_id=34555820) and [have a Tumblr ](https://octoberobserver.tumblr.com/) if that's your thing. 
> 
> Stay strong, Spn fans. We're writing the story now.


End file.
